If I Were Building a Computer Today... Rev 19

Saturday 5/3/2008

Case: Good solid case, no sharp edges inside, side vent for the CPU, two fans, adequate space for drives, all drives are clipped in (easy removal or changing).

PSU: As Computers get more powerful, and more devices are added, the power requirements will change. Look for a good P/S, one that has two +12V rails. This will help keep hot spots from developing on the motherboard.

DVD: This is not strictly required, just a convenience.  

DVD+/-RW: Every week I see these in the paper for ~$30.00 on sale. Since these devices do everything the CD-RW does and much more, it’s time to change. You will notice that I have not used the Light Scribe technology. In my opinion, it is too slow, too expensive (disks) monochrome and is not needed or used by most of the people I know that have purchased them. [See: www.LightScribe.com & www.MeritLine.com - Light Scribe technology]

Floppy Drive: Don't care. [IF loading MotherBoard Drivers during O/S Install becomes an issue without a Floppy Drive, learn how to Slipstream said Drivers - XP - www.NLiteOS.com & Vista - www.VLite.Net - They both work very well!]

Hard Drive: 

We have moved to the SATA drives. Failure rate differences of Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and the other hard drives are minimal. So that makes this a case of faster and bigger is better. Be extremely careful when installing these drives. The SATA connector on the motherboard is fragile. 

Input Devices: Wireless and optical is the way to go if you can. [See: Pointing Devices.] 

Mother Board: As quickly as these things change, they get better. This board has video on board that runs Vista Aero Glass. For non gamers, this is a very good board. [See: Gigabyte]  

Monitor:

We have finally moved to the flat panel [LCD] monitor. Here I have chosen to stick with the standard width monitor. The widescreen version looks better if you watch a lot of movies on your computer, but for real work the standard monitor size has more screen real estate and greater vertical size. This is a very personal choice, so if you can go out and look at them. Keep the Brightness at 300 or higher, the Contrast Ratio as high as possible, and the Response Time as low as possible, at least 8 or under.    

Modem: Don't care. Just make sure it plays with Windows XP. If a modem [DialUp / FAX] is the primary way you connect to the Internet (as apposed to Cable or DSL), you may want to seriously consider getting a hardware modem (as opposed to a WinModem). Pricing is in the $40.00 range.

Speakers: These are good speakers, but I have a tin ear. Use your own tastes to select the best speakers for you. [Options, see: Speakers. Shop around! Also Check out Specials from www.Directron.com for Refurbished Speakers! Wow! They sound excellent! Or www.Amazon.com]

Operating System: If you decide to go with Vista, make sure all your drivers (printer, camera, scanner, Keyboard and Mouse) can play with Vista. Check the hardware compatibility list at Microsoft. It still bothers me that if I am going to spend over $1000.00 to build a computer, I still need a $15.00 flash drive to make Windows run faster!!! Is that a bailing wire fix? [Further Info: Windows Catalog and HCL | Windows Vista ReadyBoost]

Networking: Here I have chosen a wired Router [10/100BaseT] for speed. For Laptop users you may want to substitute an 802.11g wireless device for a few dollars more. Even with the wireless Router, I would still hardwire the desktop computer and leave the slower wireless access to the laptop. 

Back Up: Lastly, one should consider how the best way to back up your system is in today’s environment. Tape is too slow and a thing of the past for personal Desktop systems. With the back up software available today, the best way to protect your data would be to use a second hard drive (which is why I use the mobile racks) and schedule a total system back up every other week to alternate backup sets. This way you can never lose more than one week of data. Since we are using this drive for backup only, it need not be the fastest drive on the market. Take a look at Casper for this task. Unlike Acronis and Ghost, Casper will not let you overwrite your boot drive. If you backup to a USB drive, then I would pay an extra $10.00 to get the Casper Boot Disk. Keep in mind, Windows does not like to (and in most cases won’t) boot from a USB device.

Maybe now is the time to consider using removable trays and two extra hard drives instead of one. This would make restoring the entire drive much simpler. 

Memory: With the price of memory, it would be silly to install less than 2GB of RAM. Now is the time to upgrade to 4GB installed RAM. Even though Windows will not use more than 3GB for programs, it still will use the extra GB for video and its own housekeeping.